Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Healthcare Workers At Ebola Epicenter Walk Off Job Over Unpaid Wages, Safety Concerns
The healthcare workers at the epicenter of Congo’s Ebola outbreak are walking off their jobs to protest delays in their payments, threatening efforts to slow the outbreak that officials said continues to spread faster than the response. In Ituri province, the hardest hit among the three provinces in eastern Congo affected by the outbreak, some of the health professionals and other front-line workers told The Associated Press they’ve not been paid their wages and bonuses since the outbreak was declared on May 15. They also alleged they were working with limited gear, and were being treated unfairly by authorities as well as response teams. (Heri Ngorora, 7/8)
It's been over 50 days since the Ebola outbreak was declared in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. Clinicians on the ground are working to save dying patients, but they lack crucial tools to fight the kind of Ebola that's spreading. "We urgently need treatments that can help people affected by Bundibugyo virus disease," says Amanda Rojek, a physician scientist at the University of Oxford — that's a rarer species of Ebola than the much-researched Zaire strain behind many previous outbreaks. (Lambert, 7/7)
More global news —
Annual cancer cases are projected to rise considerably worldwide by 2050, according to a World Health Organization report on cancer published Wednesday. With its assessment, the United Nations body tempered optimism about improvements in cancer surveillance and treatment and warned that global health care inequities are driving further cases and deaths. (Wu, 7/8)
Germany recorded more than 5,000 excess deaths during the late-June heat wave, according to preliminary data from the Federal Statistical Office. In the last full week of June, 5,486 more deaths were recorded than the 2022–2025 median, according to data from the office, which is also known as Destatis. The weekend that closed out the period coincided with the peak of the heat wave, when the temperature reached a national record of 41.7C (107.1F). Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI) is expected to publish its estimate of heat-related deaths later this week. (Brendel, 7/7)
Hong Kong's Centre for Health Protection (CHP) is reporting a new case of variant H9N2 avian flu H9N2 in a 1-year-old girl from Guangdong province. The girl first had symptoms on June 12. There is no further information provided on her current status. (Soucheray, 7/7)
